


out of every seede springeth the hearbe

by glim



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-21
Updated: 2010-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:09:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of short POV pieces, episode tag to "The Poisoned Chalice."</p>
            </blockquote>





	out of every seede springeth the hearbe

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the anonymous medieval love-vision poem "The Floure and the Leafe."

This is what Merlin remembers:

Not the slow creep of poison through his body.

And not the moment when it crept close enough to his heart to stop his life.

Nor the strange, suffocating moments in between when he struggled for both life and breath.

(Gaius tells him and Gwen tells him, fear still lingering in their rushed, hushed words and in the quick glances they cast aside instead of letting him see it in their eyes. He wishes he could remember, so they could forget.)

What he remembers is the unnatural warmth of fever, clouding his thoughts and forcing mumbled spells from his lips, until somehow he managed the right words.

Then they spilled out smoothly: spells he never learned: words he cannot now recall, just the shape and feel of them, as if he had made those words, as if the magic inside him took the form of word and light.

There was a tug at his heart, small and painful, and he tugged back with word and light, with the shifting, swirling, feverish sense of desperation that was all he had at the time.

No, not all he had, but the only link to his all, to the indefinable destiny that spells out his future in simultaneously certain and uncertain terms. His cure, his care, his concern, all bound up in the urgent need to tug back, to bring him back.

Him. The flower and leaf. The flip of the coin and the line between destiny and chance.

And the other line. The one Merlin crosses in fevered dreams and dreams not brought on by fever, the one he leaves for Arthur to set and waits for him to realize is not a separation, not a boundary, but a connection between the two of them.

When Arthur knows what Merlin already remembers, then they'll redraw the line between duty and desire, so it's less a line and more like the link that Merlin grasped for during his illness.

He imagines how it'll be different, too; how their hands will skim over each other's bodies and how their lips will meet –

(how Arthur will sigh and Merlin will speak spells he's never spoken before and his lips will simply know how to reveal to him all the secret things that once stood between them)

\- and then Arthur will know, too.

Merlin remembers, and there is no span of time, no convalescence, and no effort he can make to erase the knowledge, that the ache and the glow inside him (even now, still so deep inside him, known only to him while he waits out the days until he feels that tug again) is Arthur.

*

He wonders if it's Merlin. If having the boy around influences the way in which reality works around them all, if magic just moves in silent, swift currents through Camelot now in ways that will only become obvious in the far off future, one that he himself will never live long enough to experience. The air in the room still feels charged, though Merlin's been well long enough now to go about his duties and the last trace of pallor has faded from his skin though the traces of magic from his fevered spell casting have not.

Or, perhaps, Gaius is old enough to be imagining such things. An old man's fancy, the desire to see things that are not when his eyes are having trouble seeing those that really are. His mind still has the acumen that he worked so hard to build in the days of his youth, but sometimes it is easier to yield himself to fancy and to imagine the days he will not experience, the days when magic will flourish throughout Camelot once more.

Perhaps it's easier to look forward to that destiny that he knows full well Merlin possesses than to look back at the way his own life worked itself out. Parts of his life, anyway, the knowledge he never gained, the people he never could save, no matter how many books he read or how many curatives he concocted.

And, yet, the magic he never learned, not in any real or true manner, Gaius finds he remembers that better than he ever thought he could. The incantation needed to enchant the cure for the mortaeus was deceptively short and simple, but after the first, hesitating attempt he'd managed. After years and years, he'd managed to give speech to an ability he denied that he had and there was the magic, green and bright, blossoming in the goblet between his hands.

In the end, Gaius decides that it doesn't matter if it's his own magic he now feels buzzing at the ends of his fingertips or if it's simply a new awareness of the magic that exists around him. The sensation is both new and renewed, a reminder of the great potential for benevolence that sorcery has and the sum of that potential in the boy who knocks over piles of parchment and tracks mud into his chambers.

No, no, it doesn't matter, because Merlin is safe and somehow his life will work itself out in the end, too, and because he, Gaius, has had the opportunity to remember that there is always something new to learn and there is always the promise of renewal.

Yes, it will all work out well, and if having Merlin around means there are a few more days of magic left in this life for Gaius, then he can only be all the better for that chance.

*

What he fears most, what he tries so hard to forget, is the one thing that is ever present. His thoughts, his kingdom, they're both riddled with this disease despite his laws and lack of tolerance for those who disobey them.

There is no cure and that frightens Uther more than anything, for deep inside, beneath the fear and ire, is the knowledge that he, too, has used magic to suit his own purposes. The dark thread that twists through Camelot feels like it finds its source not in some outside power, but inside himself, and to eradicate it he would have to reach further than his own heart to where fear is inextricably tangled with love.

The greatest part, of both his fear and love, is, of course, Arthur. Arthur, born of that wish Uther made so long ago, when he had not yet known that wishes are never granted with the ease he thought they could be. The gift of an heir was not one he'd been given freely and in his heart, he wondered if he had paid for that gift too dearly.

Igraine, whom he'd loved before the laws of chivalry permitted him to do so and whom he'd made his own as soon as he saw her husband killed. Igraine, with her gold hair and white hands, who finally loved him enough to give Uther the son he had so desired. Igraine, who had died before she could hold Arthur.

Uther had chained up his fear like he'd chained the last dragon and kept it in the deepest, darkest places of his heart.

Now he feels it blossom afresh, threatening to choke him, to destroy all of Camelot, to take Arthur away from him and to force him into a sacrifice he is not willing to make. He knows his imprisonment of Arthur, something he tries to justify by calling it an act of love, is an act of fear, and that trying to rid Camelot of magic will prove just as difficult as his attempts to rid his heart of that knot of emotion.

*

This is how Arthur remembers:

Every time Merlin half-glances at him and the light catches his eyes at just the right angle that it's as if Arthur can almost see through him.

Every time he finds himself smiling and he realizes he's not sure why, but the urge to do so is irrepressible, and if he catches Merlin's eyes then, the smile threatens to blossom into laughter.

Every time there's a moment, made up of half-glances and unexpected smiles, it feels like he's losing his footing, like he's grasping for something to only feel it elude his fingers.

Every time.

It's almost a memory, almost a feeling that he can recognize, as real and as intangible as light itself. When he tries to remember, truly remember how he climbed out of the cave and how he knew the light he followed was good and safe and meant just for him, all Arthur realizes is that he can't remember. It's not that he forgets, but… his mind can't seem to find the knowledge that he needs.

And it bothers him. Immensely. He doesn't like not knowing and he certainly doesn't like the way Merlin looks at him sometimes as if Merlin knows more than he does about this whole affair.

Arthur finds, however, that he doesn't mind so much when Merlin simply looks at him in a different way. The brief smile, the lowered eyes, the warmth of a hand on his arm as they retire to his rooms at the end of the day.

One night, after he returns from Forest of Balor and Merlin is recovered enough to serve him, Arthur lets the look and the touch between them linger a few seconds longer than necessary. And, suddenly, he feels himself slipping again, feels himself on the brink of … something. Something incredibly frustrating and wonderful. He almost asks Merlin if he can feel the _thing_ between them, whatever it is, but he doesn't want to sound ridiculous or uncertain, or, and this is really what keeps Arthur quiet, scared.

The flower he needs to blossom is the same one he fears he'll crush.

There's the life debt, but they've repaid that over and over again, until there's no sense in its invocation for the attachment that's started to grow up between the two of them.

Frustrating. Maddening. Inexplicable. Wonderful.

Wonder's a better choice than frustration, so Arthur chooses that when he chooses to ask Merlin to dine with him that evening. He chooses let go of himself and to let go of the fear that accompanies that decision, and with that choice, he realizes it's all right if he has no damn clue what's going on.

They eat and drink and when Arthur brushes his fingers against the side of Merlin's face, something tugs at his heart. Merlin is his servant, but he's also _his_, and what he owes Merlin (life; or life debt) is, perhaps, in one way, not so different from what he owes Camelot.

And, in another way, it's completely different, private, and is made up of the memories of glances and smiles and the reassurance that there will always be that _something_ between them.

Maybe he'll know soon what it is.


End file.
